Legal executive duped Coventry firm out of £200,000 'to buy friends'

Ruth Turner dressed as a nun for a charity fundraiser at Kundert Solicitors

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A LEGAL executive has been jailed after confessing to duping the Coventry company where she worked out of more than £200,000.

Ruth Turner, 46, stole £205,000 from Kundert Solicitors between February 2009 to September 2011.

She secretly carried out a sophisticated scheme to swindle the company out of funds as she worked at its Bell Green office.

The elaborate fraud went undetected by colleagues but finally came to light when she confessed to police last year.

Turner was jailed for three years at Coventry Crown Court after admitting abusing her position as a company executive to syphon funds.

Using the completion of house sales as a cover, she transferred huge sums of about £10,000 into her bank accounts at a time. The most taken at once was £21,000.

The court heard she used the money to pay for home improvements and, in the words of the prosecution, “buy friends” with expensive shopping sprees, meals and concert trips.

The financial loss to Kundert Solicitors has left the firm facing doubled insurance premiums and a £100,000 investigation bill.

Turner, of Sunnydale Road, Hinckley, started work there as a secretary in 2006, progressing to the role of conveyancing executive on an annual salary of £36,000.

Prosecuting, Ian Ball told how Turner felt committed the crime because she found it a struggle to pay spiralling debts and had felt a social outcast most of her life.

Mr Ball said: “She found by taking friends to lavish events, shopping, meals, that she was suddenly popular.

“The money was going out as quickly as it was coming in, spending some money on the house, taking friends out and going live concerts including Neil Diamond twice in one week.”

He explained how she fled the Station Square offices in September last year, after an outburst colleagues assumed was due to personal problems.

Turner returned to work the next day as normal but turned herself in at a police station the following Monday to confess the substantial sum of money she had stolen – taking with her bank statements as proof of her fraudulent transactions.

Mr Ball said she told police she’d stolen about £400,000, but due to lack of evidence she could only be charged for £205,000.

Turner, who has a son at university and was the primary carer for her 75-year-old mother, admitted the charge at an earlier hearing.

Graham Russell, for Turner, painted a picture of a woman ‘driven to desperation’ against a background of an abusive relationship, financial problems and mental health issues including depression and compulsive behaviours.

He said his client felt so ashamed of what she had done, she attempted suicide before handing herself in to police.

Mr Russell said: “Many people who suffer depression find themselves engaging in some form of compulsive activity.

“I would suggest, having in mind the abusive relationship she was in, having in mind that she was having difficulty with compulsive eating and compulsive drinking, that would go some way to explaining the compulsive stealing and compulsive spending.”

Sentencing Turner to three years in prison, Judge Richard Griffith-Jones described it as a “serious abuse of trust” which risked the company in a tough economic climate and put colleagues’ jobs in jeopardy.

He said: “You were doing it out of greed, and you weren’t really being as generous as you felt when you were treating friends with this extravagant lifestyle because it wasn’t your money to be generous with.”

A Kundert Solicitors official who attended the hearing declined to comment.